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PART 1. Little England in the Styx
PART 2. Who Killed Cock Robin?
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The global investigation is led by local
UEA-educated detective Ken Hill; ‘aided’/replaced by Agatha Christ-Eyed
intertextual detective duo (or copyright fraud depending on how postmodern we
are) Poirot & Marple; along with some unspecified ‘contributions’ from American
Chlorinated Intelligence Agent Frank and Mark Adams (working out of Room 101A in
Cock Hall.) Dead Author’s brilliant Vision of the Murder vies with DI Ken’s Critical Theory, read against the grain of the text, the impasse allowing Colonel Mustard to counterplot a trumped up Fake News Story against the Murder
genre itself, replacing it with an advert for his business.
The baffled
Privatised Eyes work through a recalcitrant list of suspects; a postmodern
gossip of competing narratives and motives and several family-sized Pandora
tissue-boxes of lies. As the Last Trump of their combined effort subsides, we
hear the late Squire’s unhinged prophesy of another global virus to come – love
- which will spread from heart to heart; embrace the whole world and redeem
humanity.
The setting
Cock Hall
The locally abbreviated name for ‘Peacock Hall.’
Its long history, “Saxon foundation, Civil War change of hands”
Walpole-Townshend Enlightenment graces (paid for by African slaves); Room 101A
“full of Death Kites from China” (now infiltrated by the CIA); Krishna’s Eyes in
its Peacock Tail (stolen like Wilkie Collins’ Moonstone, from fabulous India) -
not to mention its extensive grounds embracing a Bronze Age to First World War
excavation site; a Boudicca Trail, a ‘Hereward’ Fen and a 14C “Canon Bullfinch
Rook-Lark” Church of Little England - embody the whole of English history and
pre-history. Cock Hall is England as a haunted house with a closet full of
skeletons; a Brown Lady in the attic and a Blak in the cellar. The mad wife
roams freely in the Peacock grounds.
Little England in the Styx
The Victims
Squire Robin Peacock of Cock Hall, the chief landowner of Little England In The
Styx and a recent convert to Green farming and politics. An amateur author
positioned as a Robin Hood of Loxley Hall on the side of the common man, he has
lately become a patron of visionaries and authors on his Estate, and of a
world-famous archaeological dig on his land. His great economic and political
rival in village affairs is Colonel Mustard.
Dr Blak, a Blakean-visionary author
and outsider, found dead on the cellar steps before the story begins,
nevertheless accused of his own murder (and the Squire’s) by Mrs Wight on the
basis of his colour. Appears with the Brown Lady as a headless ghost.
The murder
weapon Corona (‘crown’, ‘halo’; ‘the dome of body parts like those of the head
or penis’; ‘the luminous envelope of concentric white light around the sun’)
virus. A serial global murder weapon with the terrified world in its clutches
throughout the story.
The Interro-Gated Community (Suspects)
Eve Lady Peacock,
wife of the Squire. A High Tory Royalist and a Clytemnestra of expensive and
indulgent appetites. Her definition of Love as “a public stage for private
parts” was removed from the Dis on Sea Argus by a threat of legal action but
remains hidden among Author’s spiral notepads on his desk in his cottage shrine
‘Jerusalem.’Her name connects her to Juno and Argus, whose all-seeing prying
Eye was banished to the Peacock’s tail. Opposes the Squire’s vision for Cock
Hall; his patronising of dreamers; and his plan to marry their daughter to a
Green but as she already ‘wears the jodhpurs’ in their relationship may not feel
the need to kill him. Linked to Mrs Wight by ‘snow’. Seems to favour-
Colonel
Norman ‘D (Lightful D Leerious D) Mustard, a Trumpian entrepreneur; the Huntin’
Shootin’ and Hangin’ Tory millionaire chairman of Mustard’s Holiday Hearths who
has privatised Bombadil Common and has aggressive designs on the Cock Hall
Estate including (the Squire believes) on Lady Peacock. He represents Little
England’s Tourist as opposed to Farming interest. Provides Holiday Homes,
Holiday Hunts and ‘Authentic Hysterical Torcs’ along the ‘Boudicca Trail.’
Mrs
Self-Island Wight, Housekeeper of Cock Hall, a refugee from a Home Counties
‘invaded by outsiders’ in love with Colonel Mustard and hostile to the Squire’s
growing old-liberalism. Huntin’, Shootin’ and Hangin’ without the fortune to
finance it. Self -appointed representative of the village’s “semi-detached
bourgeois realist plot in-my-beginning is-my-Middle-England-ever-after revenge
narrative planetary-extinction-with-farm-views cul de sac.” Believes There is No
Society except private life and no business except her nose up everyone else’s.
Flies a Union flag whenever Her Majesty is in residence at nearby Sandringham.
Devoted to her ‘Snow White’ Queen Lady Peacock. Identifies with – and (her
doctor notes) increasingly as - her.
Jack Green, an ethical farmer and Radical,
who ‘would kill to Green the Cock Hall Estate’; fiancé (lately estranged) of
Miss Scarlet. A child of nature and very much in tune with the woods, seasons
and the albums Jethro Tull was making in the late 70s. Miss Scarlet daughter of
the Squire and Lady Peacock and heir to the Estate. Shares Jack Green’s Radical
passions though recently seduced by Plumski’s more violent revolutions. Runs a
‘Radical’ Bistro in Burnham Up Market.
Professor Plumski, an Old Stalinist,
running armed underground campaigns from the Gun Room of Cock Hall under the
Squire’s ‘eccentric’ patronage but hurt by the Squire’s recent preference for
the utopian ‘New Jerusalem’ of Dr Blak.
Dick Sparrow, a retired Superhead, now
retraining the House Guides for Colonel Mustard’s Cock Hall Murder Weekend. Has
invested his nest egg (derived from getting other people to do his job for him)
in an English Language School/Chinese Money Laundering Business in Hubei
Province and divides his time between the two.
A Statement from the Sparrow
Family. “We live in the grotto in Dead Author’s garden and like most sparrows
never do anyone any harm, least of all robin. On the contrary, we live in terror
of Ebony, Author’s cat. Our cheerful Christmas single “Sparrows in the grotto”
was even left off the Covid album because of our alleged association with Dick
Sparrow, a puffed up little show-off who disowned us all long ago. He turfed
several of his siblings out of the nest to feather his own ambitions. If he
dunit, we wouldn’t be surprised.”
‘Dr Blak’ Author’s avatar in his Murder Story.
(Blak is Author’s foreignized-English pen name, a self-identification with
outsiders, the oppressed, the unrepresented - art giving a voice to those who
don’t have one in society, as with the many female protagonists in Greek Tragedy
- and the original murder victim in Cluedo.) When accused of the Squire’s
Murder, maintains that he “wasn’t there”, he was “on the cellar steps, the
victim of a previous crime.” His name and cottage-name also connect him with
William Blake, Radical visionary and author of ‘Jerusalem, (from Blake’s
‘Milton’) the revolutionary New England fought for by the Parliamentary side in
the English Civil War.
The Detectives
DI Ken Hill, a rooted local (fast-tracked
after a Critical Theory degree at UEA) and very protective of his area. His
still waters run deep and very much faster than his surface appears. On another
level he is the spirit of place; in this case, of the story’s haunted Norfolk
setting (‘Icenia’) and a personification of Ken Hill, whose wooded hill and Wash
shoreline was associated with Bronze and Iron Age religious practices. Also
linked to ‘Kenning Hall’, lost palace of dead Saxon Kings; absent Norfolk Dukes,
and divining knowledge. Has hidden depths, of buried Celtic gold.
DS Len Wade
Ken’s faithful Broadland Sergeant, worried about their lack of progress in
solving the Coronavirus Murder. His name means ‘slow moving stream’ and links
with Great Witchingham, site of the last duel in Norfolk in 1698, its squire
slain by the squire of Blickling Hall.
DS Lynn Ken’s Lynn-based reinforcement, a
veteran of mean streets and mean drug crime and charmed by her holiday homicide
among the North Norfolk ponces. Wants to be Miss Scarlet and thinks everyone
else does too.
Poirot from Belgium ie an emblem of Britain in Europe, an
embattled ally whose neutrality Britain guarded by treaty and action since 1839;
and more recently, via Brussels, of the EU. Poirot is an English institution,
the genius Holmes to the wounded Watson soldier-hero friend/ami Captain
Hastings. And yet utterly foreign, a continental bachelor-dandy cartoon of
cuisine, couture and cosmopolitanism. Like Marple, makes Hastings (and many
‘macho’ English detectives) look much more of an idiot than Holmes ever did
Watson which makes its own point about continental theory over English
pragmatism/ public school twitism/ English patriarchy. Where his beloved friend
is a romantic fool where women are concerned, has instead a genuine empathy for
the female. His razor-sharp intelligence (egg shaped head) and justified
cynicism is warmed (again like Marple) by a protectiveness towards young love
and an ability to judiciously forgive.
Jane Marple (‘Jane Austen’?) An Anglican,
One Nation, Tory apotheosis of Old Village England. Viz, a Great Power engaged
in World Wars with wounded young Captains and got-rich-quick colonials returning
to loved home shores only to miss the wide open spaces, enterprise and derring
do of Empire. In short a Great not a Little Briton. An Old Maid sympathetic to
Young Lovers. Broadened by travel but sees the World in her Village and her
Village in the World. Identifies universals like Evil or Lucifer as her foe. Too
realistic about fallen humanity to be a Liberal but too good-hearted (and
genuinely Christian) to be a Neoliberal.
Chlorinated Intelligence Agent Frank
and Mark Adams, “Government contracted on a private number.” A private double
agent working out of a secret room in Cock Hall (Room 101A) on a contract for
Colonel Mustard but also probably for American interests in Cock Hall. Attempt
to solve the Covid case in classic “Big Sleep’ tough-talking Philip (or possibly
Christopher) Marlow deflated by a 2020 Trumpian tendency to foul hot air.
Private-eyesed by an equation of any public health enterprise against the Covid
crisis with Reds under the Hospital Beds. On a theory that might help the common
good, Frank declares “I can’t share it, man. It’s Mark’s.”
PC Plot PC Plod’s
political correction.
WPC Plot For those who assume PC Plot is a man. She may be
but ‘assume’ makes an ass out of you and me.
Chief Constable (John) Melton
brings in Agatha Christ Eyes (Poirot and Marple) from AC/OCD to help/replace the
existing team led by Ken Hill, at the behest of:
Superintendent “Market’ Law of
Bourgeois Realist Plod
NHS Pathologist dies on the front line of the pandemic
and vital DNA evidence is lost with him.
Author Ransome, the anti-social
socialist surrealist. Believes there is a Society just not the one he attacks in
Little England in the Styx. Self-isolated with his wife long before Covid,
though longing to be loved, catches Covid, dies surrounded by all who understood
him (none) after which he is furloughed as a ghost-writer by the Clued Ouija
Board. The shadow of his former self is ‘Dr Blak’, the visionary outsider.
Mrs
Ransome, his long-suffering wife and semi-detached cottage narrator. The sane
wife in the lockdown rather than the mad wife in the attic. When she also
perishes in the pandemic, her ‘reliable’ narrative voice is replaced by the
visions of Dr Blak, Ken Hill, Marple and Poirot.
Post-man Pat. A postmodern man
arrested in pursuit of his public duty by private vigilantes for trespassing on
private property. Public hospitalised by Covid and, when in NHS Care, leads a
public protest at the privatised shops selling quack medicines,
virus-transmitting ‘PPE’ kits; obesity drinks; heart attack crisps and stroke
sweets: and generally acting like he owned the place.
Butler He didn’t do it
(but did he see it?)
A Welsh mountain family seeking their Iceni roots in
Cockley Cley (their holiday home there is called ‘Llanfairpwllgwyn
gyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch’.) They fetch up at Cock Hall by
mistake. They can cope with the rolling Boudiccan hill and the sheep but are
traumatised by the fens.
Chef ‘Gammon’ Wight Mrs Wight’s nepotism-promoted son.
His signature dish – replacing before the Squire is even cold the previously
favoured Peacock Au Vin - is Snobside of Brexit and, at Christmas, Castrated
Cock.
The Brown Lady The ghost of Dorothy Walpole Townshend; wife of ‘Turnip’
Townshend; sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and the heart that joined them when
that family firm was thriving and ruling 18C Britain and its incipient Empire.
Now a heritage asset but will not haunt to order; a browned up Mrs Wight often
substitutes.
hanks to Nancy the Cat for her impassioned, frequently unscripted
but brilliantly timed performance as Ebony (check out her trumpet solo on Who
Killed Cock Robin? Nice.)
Dis. Hell in classical literature The music: Just drum
and bass. A dark backdrop against which the comedy may shine.
The heroes: the
NHS.
